Revamp by Sportech makes football pools a draw again

After 15 years of National Lottery-induced pain and more than nine million lost customers, the football pools are fighting back.

All the great old names - Littlewoods, Vernons, Zetters - are now in one house, Sportech, trading as The New Football Pools and with former Liverpool star John Barnes as a celebrity pundit. It today unveiled a 20% rise in 2008 revenues and a 40% surge in underlying profits to £16 million. "We have seen the first upturn in business since the launch of the Lottery in 1994," said chief executive Ian Penrose. He has spent three years shaking up the business, whose customer numbers have slumped to 650,000.

Penrose is trying to take the pools from its traditional fiftysomething and sixtysomething northern heartland into new markets online and through deals with bookies.